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>Hi Fellow DEA Enthusiasts!
>
>I have been reading an interesting essay in the Heath Anthology Of
>American Literature (1990--Vol. 1). This Anthology is impressive in that
>it includes 115 Dickinson poems and 27 of her letters (quite a nice
>representation for an anthology). The introduction to the poems and
>letters, an essay by Peggy McIntosh, of Wellesley College, Center for
>Research on Women, and Ellen Louise Hart, the University of California at
>Santa Cruz, Cowell College, gives information that I'd like to understand
>in more depth.
>
>Please read this quote from the essay:
>
>"Why Dickinson spent only one year at Mount Holyoke, we do not know. Her
>father seems to have wanted her at home. Religious pressure may also
>have contributed to her departure. Mary Lyon, founder of the Seminary,
>ranked incoming students on the basis of their spiritual condition, and
>her staff made separate lists of those how "had a hope" of (receiving
>God's grace), or had "indulged" a hope, or had no hope. Dickinson's name
>remained on the final list, despite intense public pressure to attend
>religious meetings and re-examine her soul. Her letters suggest that she
>refused to profess a sense of sin; such a refusal required an astonishing
>degree of originality and courage..."
>
>I wonder how Mary Lyon ascertained Emily's spiritual condition? Were
>there personal interviews? Were there written questionnaires and do they
>still survive? What was the 'intense public pressure' and how did it
>manifest itself?
>
>The essay goes on to say:
>
>"Her poems and letters indicate that throughout her life she felt she had
>a direct route to the Infinite, especially through the world of the mind,
>and that churches, sermons, preachers, revival meetings, and theological
>vocabulary did not express her sense of eternity, tremendousness, awe, or
>spiritual center, which she also named Circumference. Attention to her
>own experience was her great route to the Infinite."
>
>Thanks in advance for any help you can give in understanding the motives
>and methods of Mary Lyon, founder of the Seminary.
>
>My best,
>Debbie Smith
>________________________________________________________________
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Dr. Marcy Tanter
Department of English and Languages
Box T-0300
Tarleton State University
Stephenville, TX 76401
phone/voicemail: 254 968-9892
"He has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating it's [sic]
most sacred rights of life and liberty in the persons of a distant people
who never offended him, captivating & carrying them into slavery in another
hemisphere, or to incur miserable death in their transportation thither.
This piratical warfare, the opprobium of INFIDEL powers, is the warfare of
the CHRISTIAN king of Great Britain. Determined to keep open a market
where MEN should be bought & sold, he has prostituted his negative for
suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or to restrain this
execrable commerce."
--Thomas Jefferson, rough draft of The Declaration of Independence, 1776
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